The present invention relates to a comminuting apparatus. More particularly this invention concerns such an apparatus used for comminuting turning and the like.
The turnings produced by metal working operations and the like are readily recyclable, but extremely difficult to handle in their normal state. For this reason it is common practice to comminute such turnings, that is to reduce them to small particles or pieces that can readily be handled.
Such a comminuting apparatus normally has a rotor carried on a support and rotatable about an axis fixed relative to this support. At least one outer rotor element and at least one inner rotor element are spaced axially apart on the rotor and define respective orbits that are centered on the axis of rotation of the rotor. A housing normally formed as a body of revolution centered on the rotation axis for the rotor contains this rotor and is provided with one or more stator elements juxtaposed with the orbits. The turnings to be comminuted are fed axially into one end of the interior of this housing as the rotor moves at high speed so that the turnings are cut and torn apart between the stator and rotor elements, eventually issuing from the other axial end of the housing via an outlet.
In such devices, the housing is normally of decreasing cross-sectional size from the inlet toward the outlet. A harpoon-type or pusher-type feeder is provided upstream of the rotor for advancing the turnings toward this rotor. Thus the orbit of the outer rotor element normally carried on a so-called breaker arm is larger in diameter than the orbit of the inner rotor element.
Such comminuters periodically become jammed up. The turnings become wedged between the side of the housing and the rotor elements so that the rotor can no longer rotate, the motor driving it overloads and the thermal cutout shuts the machine down. It is then necessary for the operator of the machine to reach into the inlet and pull out the wedged-in masses of turnings. These turnings are normally very sharp, coated with oil and wedged tightly in placed so that this is an extremely onerous task. Furthermore such a machine will almost invariably jam up if a relatively massive object which cannot be sheared in half or torn in half by the interaction of the rotor and stator elements is fed into it.